The present invention relates to a case for coins and/or plastic cards or similar items.
Wallets are mostly made of leather or plastics. Today, there are different shapes according to requirements. Most widespread are wallets for men in horizontal or vertical formats, which are collapsible and have a size of about 12.5×10 cm in the closed condition. When opened, they provide space for banknotes across their overall length and contain other compartments for credit cards and other plastic cards, visiting cards and identity cards, which can be optionally swung out. In Europe, a compartment for coins is also a part of the usual configuration. Men often wear their billfold in a backside pocket of their trouser, and therefore the backside pockets are adapted to the above-mentioned size. A large diversity of shapes and colours exists amongst wallets for women. Many models are similar in shape to the above-described wallets for men. However, there are also considerably larger exemplars which offer significantly more space.
Billfolds are flat containers for identity cards, paper money, folded documents and other items, having front pocket size and mostly being foldable together. Billfolds are made of leather, sometimes also of textile cloth, and are often worn in the inner front pockets of men's jackets. The dimensions of the jacket's inner pockets and those of the billfolds are mostly adapted to each other and amount to somewhat more than a doubly folded DIN A4- or one DIN A6 format respectively, thus, about 17×12 cm in length and width.
Document DE 33 14 535 A1 describes a case with two flat half-shells, pivoting about an axis and designed essentially uniformly. The half-shells are movable along an axis and can be clicked together by means of a locking device. In this, the half-shells can be shifted and closed against the force of a spring arranged around the pivot pin. According to an embodiment, an insert is attached in one half-shell, which has bridges with T-shaped cross section which function for retaining coins of different size. The coins can be thrust in and out via openings which are provided in the front side of the half-shell. The bridges have a portion running parallel to the bottom of the half-shell, which is provided with interrupted, parallel slits on both sides of that portion which runs vertical to the former portion. The slits enable to bend out the vertically running portion in the region of the largest diameter of a thrust-in coin, and thus its captive lateral retaining.
The other half-shell has an insert with an elastically designed clamp with fingers, by which e.g. an identity card or a credit card is held.
In this case, insertion and take-out of single coins is laborious. The retainer of the credit card is unsafe, and insertion and take-out of a credit card can result in that other items that are held by the clamp will fall out.
Document DE 41 19 792 C2 describes a portable, expandable container made of plastics, a multi-purpose portfolio in billfold format in particular, for accommodating coins, cheque cards, visiting cards and identity cards in particular. The container has two half-shells, connected to each other by means of an elastic back joint. The elastic back joint is designed as a roll back joint consisting of a one-piece sequence of a plurality of film joint single joints. The roll back joint consists of plastics and has alternating grooves and longitudinal bridges, the grooves causing the elastic bending property on the grooves, and the stability and rigidity on the longitudinal bridges. The container is preferably a two-materials piece, the half-shells consisting of a correspondingly hard material, whereas a second, softer plastics is used for the back joint. But however, the container can be made from one single material or substance, so that one may arrive at a compromise solution which provides a too soft material for the half-shells, and a too hard material for the roll back joint.